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Sermon by Julie Stoneberg A few years ago, I volunteered as an after-school tutor for a program in West Berkeley. My assignment included being something of a playground monitor during the break times. One afternoon, in the middle of a volleyball game, a couple of the boys got into a physical fight over the ball. My response was automatic. I grabbed them by their shirt collars, forced them to stand nose to nose, and then ordered them to say they were sorry to one another…which they did…eventually…but without even an ounce of remorse, at least as far as I could tell. I'm not proud of that moment, but I recognize that my reaction was a fall-back onto how I was raised. I don't know about you, but I was taught that I 'should' always say I'm sorry, and that when apologized to, I 'should' always forgive. Forgiveness is one of those virtues that we strive to teach our children, yet the expressions of hurt and anger on those two young faces are still with me; they clearly needed something more. I'm beginning to question the logic of this mandate to forgive; I wonder if merely saying the words of apology does any good at all. There must be a better way. I'm curious about what it would have been like to have taken a time-out together to talk about it. Maybe they needed to hear each other's stories, to hear how the one had been feeling left out of the game, feeling inferior to the skills of the other players, and when the ball had suddenly hit him hard in the shoulder, he felt it as a personal assault. Perhaps the boy who had hit the ball had a story to tell about his parents, about how whenever anything happens, he gets blamed, sometimes in physically abusive ways, and that he's had about as much of it as he can take. I know this is wishful thinking. It probably would have been impossible to get two 10 year olds to tell each other such self-aware stories, and perhaps children do learn something just by practicing the act of apologizing, however insincere it may be. But I do love imagining how it could have been different. When I was asked to do this service, it was suggested that the theme be around Yom Kippur, because this most holy of Jewish holidays begins at sundown next Sunday. I had some reservations about doing a service on Yom Kippur. I'm not Jewish, and I admit to being a novice scholar in this area, but I think there's something very powerful about this holiday, something very important that we can all learn from. That said, I proceed with caution and a sense of reverence. I ask your forgiveness, with honest sincerity, for any faux pas that I may commit. My first real exposure to Yom Kippur was about three years ago at a weekly chapel service at Pacific School of Religion, where I attend seminary. A rabbi came to do the service, a female rabbi, and to witness a woman's presence in that role was quite awe-inspiring. She wore a beautiful prayer shawl and a rather dapper sort of floppy beret…not the usual yamika one might expect. In a very quiet, yet ardent voice, she explained some of the history and the practice of Yom Kippur. At the end of the service, she called her young daughter forward, an obviously shy and self-conscious adolescent, who with her mother's encouraging hand on her shoulder, blew the shofar, the ram's horn. The shofar has a mournful and familiar sound, pouring out a virtual chorus of past and future voices. Seeing this mother-rabbi gently carrying the tradition forward was a beautiful embodiment of the sound that poured over the pews. I was so touched by both the memory and the meaning of the holiday, that I immediately went to my computer and emailed all my friends back in MN, to ask forgiveness for all of the many things that I have done, intentionally or unintentionally. In fact, I used some of the words from the Litany of Atonement we read together just a little bit ago. The many responses I got surprised me; apparently others have a similar deep desire to feel that they are forgiven…they long to come to that place of reconciliation. Right now we're in Rosh Hashanah, which is the celebration of a new year of how one thinks and acts, the time when God inscribes one's name in the Book of Life for the coming year. A popular practice of the holiday is Tashlikh ("casting off"). The idea is to take a walk somewhere where water is flowing, such as a creek or river, and to empty your pockets into the river, symbolically casting off your sins. Yom Kippur follows about a week after Rosh Hashanah, and is called the Day of Atonement, the day that the Book of Life, and one's fate for the coming year, is sealed. At Yom Kippur one seeks atonement for sins against Ha'shem, the unnamable one. In the Jewish tradition, there is an understanding that Ha'shem will not offer forgiveness unless one is in right relation with others. This requires apologizing to everybody that you've offended, hurt or trespassed against during the past year. This day is the last chance to demonstrate true repentance, and Jews gather in synagogues to pray unceasingly for atonement before the book is closed. I had a conversation with a dear friend about atonement last week. (I know. How often does that happen?) In my Christian upbringing, atonement was always synonymous with the sacrifice of Jesus. So, I've been exploring what atonement might mean outside of Christian theology. This friend's take on it was that it is a concept tied up in relationship: since atonement is a reconciliation, or reparation, it cannot happen alone…it has to be in inter-action with one another. Both parties play a role in its fulfillment. Seen this way, reconciliation or atonement implies that each person in the interaction must have a willingness for a new relationship. But this still leaves me wondering about forgiveness; Exactly what role does it play? As I've worked on this message for today, I find that I am beginning to think about forgiveness in a new way. The focus of Yom Kippur is not actually on forgiveness but on repentance, or teshuva. Repentance is not taken lightly…it involves no less than five elements. The first is to recognize one's sin, then to feel true remorse, to stop the offending behavior, make restitution if at all possible, and finally to confess or to ask forgiveness. What I find very interesting is that Judaism makes no requirement of the offended person to forgive the offender. It is left to them to decide if the offender feels sincere remorse and is worthy of their forgiveness. Where does this leave us? If no one ever reached a place of being willing to forgive, it seems we would have a world of bitter and damaged people, who are never able to release the hurt. (Oh, wait. maybe that IS where we're at!) I don't suppose it would surprise you to hear that research has shown that people who have a health problem often have a forgiveness problem as well. Repressing and holding tightly to emotions can be causative of disease. Interestingly enough, a common ingredient in the healing practices of native cultures is catharsis, a complete release of emotion. The Internet, which some might call a modern medium for finding community, is full of 'forgiveness' sights…where one can read stories of forgiveness, learn the 'simple' steps to forgiveness, and even write-in their personal apologies. I went to one of these apology rooms…it was a seemingly endless list, with people apologizing for lying, cheating, sleeping around, betraying trust, stealing…all kinds of palpable pain has been poured out onto an electronic page, emptying their pockets, as it were, of their sins. People are seeking forgiveness, or maybe they're looking to forgive themselves. As you listen to this, are you placing yourself…? Are you thinking here as the one who needs to confess, or as the one who might grant forgiveness? I'm not so sure that the positions are all that different. Many say that in order to forgive, one must be able/willing to forgive oneself. In other words, we are simultaneously the repentant and the forgiver. Remember the story of the right hand and the left hand? If we extend that concept of oneness out into all of existence, when I hurt someone else, I am also hurting myself, and the forgiveness required is multi-layered and interdependent. Forgiveness has the potential of releasing a feeling of reconciliation, allowing it to flow out into all of existence. Over the summer, I read a beautiful little book called "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. Perhaps some of you have read it. The title character, a mistreated and mother-less teenager named Lily, becomes part of an unusual household where she experiences love, yet she continues to struggle with the abuse she suffered from her father. Lily observes, "People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, 'I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die,' a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin." This is what's at the heart of Yom Kippur. God is saying, I'll write your name in the book of life, but only if you genuinely repent, do your best to right the wrong and ask for forgiveness. Before that language becomes a stumbling block, let's just take that old metaphor out for a bit of fresh air. I, like many of you, don't believe that there is a white-bearded man who lives in the sky, holding a huge tome, quill in hand, watching our every move and making notes. For me, God, or god-energy, is a matter of immanence, present existence. God is the sheer synergy of all of our connections. The book of life, well, that's nothing less than shared memory, it's what we feed back into our existence to create the future. It's the sound of the shofar. It's a reminder that we have a role in ensuring that the future is life well-lived. As Lily reminded me, if we choose to hold onto our fear and anger, we might as well go ahead and order our coffins. Another way to look at this is to use the metaphor of the body. As in the reading from Thich Nhat Hanh, we are each one component, like a hand, of a body that must operate all together, in consideration of the whole, in order to be healthy. The bad news is that we seem to have forgotten the connections, so that in fact, the left hand IS jealous of the right, and the right hand sometimes means to strike the left with a hammer. With the image of our inter-connection in front of us, asking for forgiveness takes on a different meaning. When I choose to repent for a wrong-doing, I not only seek forgiveness of and offer restitution to the person I wronged, but I also necessarily ask forgiveness of the whole. Forgiveness is a movement of the heart that works for reconciliation, right relation, for the whole of the world community …human, animal, plant…all of existence. Atonement and forgiveness become an internal process toward wholeness. They are a critical part of building the kingdom, or as a favorite UU hymn says, of building a land where peace is born. If we want the future to be better, our oh-so-human beings must be willing to repent and to do our best to make restitution, that is, to pay for what we've done. I believe that this is our duty as parts of whole. This is not easy stuff, but I believe it is possible. The root meaning of forgiveness in biblical terms refers to "releasing" or letting go. In fact, forgiveness only becomes possible when self-will is replaced by willingness; it results less from the effort than from the openness, which, at Rosh Hashanah, is symbolized by the willingness to open your pockets and release all that you've been holding onto. John Patton, in a book called "Is Human Forgiveness Possible?" says that forgiveness is not so much an act as it is a discovery, a discovery that I am more like those who have hurt me than different from them. Forgiving and being forgiven pulls one out of a self-centered mire, and lifts you back into a circulating stream of community. This movement requires a lot of us…it requires walking out into that river, stepping outside of comfortable territory and crossing borders, borders of difference, of shame, of culture, of seeking revenge, and of needing to be right. Forgiving and being forgiven requires us to move outside of ourselves, out of our immediate communities and out into the ocean of wholeness. I think a lot about our world these days, and I imagine that you do too. Our world seems to be so fractured. Looking at that big broken picture can be daunting. I sometimes feel so hopeless, just an observer as people and governments far away and out of my control do things that go against my basic notions of peace and goodwill. And unfortunately, I see the shadows of all this malevolence in simple daily interactions…when I am impatient with a store clerk, or a fellow freeway driver, or when I can't quite abide the 'unusual' way in which someone on a committee with me chooses to operate. My reaction is often one of exasperation and walking away, rather than of a movement toward reconciliation and understanding. This chain of denial of guilt and accusation of others is potentially endless. Seeking scapegoats, blaming others, ultimately leads to the same old, never-ending violence, and often that violence is damage done to our own hearts. Let me remind you of one element of teshuva, repentance, that I think is crucial; that is, the promise to stop the offending behavior. This means that to even have a chance at being forgiven, you must want the future to be different. There has to be a promise that things are going to change. Such a promise, if authentic, makes a new beginning possible. In the midst of hopelessness, being willing to work toward a different future opens up new possibilities…renewing hope. Marc Ellis, a Jewish ethicist, would call this revolutionary forgiveness. It's not about forgetting the injustice, for that will always remain a part of both the victim and the victimizer. Revolutionary forgiveness carries a desire to create something different, a society beyond injustice. Though there are never any guarantees for the future, the ability to move forward, to transpose the memory of injustice into a call for freedom, is dependent on a commitment to move beyond past violation and hurt. I read a story I'd like to tell you about. It's about a Vietnamese Buddhist temple that has existed for over ten years in a working class neighborhood in Boston. The temple became the target of repeated vandalism at the hands of neighborhood teenagers, which culminated in a statue of Avalokitesvara, the goddess of compassion being smashed. Though the sangha considered moving, they were reminded that in Buddhist thought, the cause of an action is a co-arising condition, and they realized that they had contributed to the problem by isolating themselves from the community. So, instead of prosecuting the boys, they decided to get more involved in their neighborhood, holding clean-ups and cook-outs, inviting the vandals themselves to join in. They chose not to prosecute, but to walk with them, to find out about their lives, and to do what they could to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. The result of this action has been a swell of community spirit, empowerment on every level, and even a neighborhood interfaith tolerance campaign. The temple ordered a beautiful new statue of the goddess of compassion and chose to put it outside of the building, where she could see and be seen by all. When asked about the choice to forgive, a member of the temple said, "We are not a separate entity from these boys. Everybody is like a cell in our own body. To strike back at those who harmed us is like hitting our right hand with our left hand. The whole body hurts." Rosh Hashanah is a time of new beginnings. Yom Kippur focuses on repentance, but to move beyond that and to come to a place of reconciliation requires acts of forgiveness. Just so, the Buddhists in this story understood that forgiveness is a revolutionary act that allows for new beginnings, beginnings that hold the promise of a different future. Holding grudges, demanding vengeance, and remaining in fearful isolation does indeed fuel the illusion of separateness. It is only an illusion, because in fact, we are all parts of the same body. As we enter this new year, may we walk with open hearts, and a willingness to participate in random and radical acts of forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves and each other, may we begin anew in love. Blessed be and amen.  |